The ride back from the Caribe is stopped just before Limon, where a road block is stationed to check vehicles and passengers for drugs coming in from nearby Panama and Columbia. We are told to exit the coach with our bags and wait in line to be searched. It is only 8:45 in the morning but the fierce tropical sun has already began it’s assault on the day’s temperature, and the black asphalt and lack of wind is making this waiting process almost unbearable. I reach the table, under a blue tarp which provides a bit of comfort for the officials, and lay out the contents of my backpack for inspection. Though I know I have nothing to hide, there is something unnerving about a 17 year old kid with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder riffling though your belongings and giving you commands. With a nod to his superior, my inspector gives me the OK to pack up and get back on the bus. A few minutes later, having found nothing of interest, the rest of the passengers are given similar approvals and with an unsatisfied wave from the chief we are back on the road, heading west for San Jose.

Jess’s plane leaves early the next morning and for the first time in two weeks I find myself completely alone. A friend of mine, Trevor, is scheduled to fly into town the following afternoon, and so from now until then I have nothing to do but explore the metropolitan side of Costa Rica. The airport is located, not in San Jose, but rather in the suburb of Alajuela. From the terminal’s arrival platform I push myself through the circus of high-priced taxi drivers, cross the street to the bus parada, and for 250 colones catch a ride to Alajuela Central.

I decide to stay just down the street from the Parque Central and for $15 a night grab a room at the Hotel Mango Verde. I am still in the downstairs courtyard when I meet Dave. He and another partner, Dan, had come down from the States to begin a bio-diesel plant using, among other things, spent cooking oil from restaurants. I find him immediately interesting. We spend an hour or so sipping tea and discussing the future of petroleum use and what a large scale shift in energy resource could mean for a country like Costa Rica, with a majority of its automobiles utilizing diesel fuels already as well as being a rather large producer of palm oil.

With visions of recycled cooking oil dancing in my head, I grab my camera and head out onto the streets of Alajuela. I meander leisurely past the countless, colored, uniformed students to which I had now become accustomed, and enter the Marcado Central with its humming, epicentric air teaming with the vocal cries of merchants and venders advertising everything necessary for daily living. From my spot well within the maze of booths I watch a man weigh out huge blocks of white cheese and a woman cutting open her chyote’s to show they are ripe. Next to me, at a lunch counter, two elderly men are heavy in concentration about a game of checkers, for which the pieces, long since lost, have been replaced by irregular found objects. A chicle wrapper, a Coca-Cola bottle cap, some bits of cut up playing cards; I am baffled on how they can keep their own pieces straight.

I purchase a piece of sweet bread from one of the small panderias and head out of the market up to the Parque Central. The park is undeniably the hub of activity, or lack there of, in Alajuela. Throughout the shade filled square, park benches are full of students, workers, grandmothers, children, and lovers all taking a break from the hot, urban sun beneath the large, leafy mango trees. Small clusters girls walk diagonally through the plaza with double scoop ice cream cones paying no attention to the packs of boys eyeing them fervently with the confidence only a group of friends can create. In the center of the square, and in line with the west facing doors of the cathedral in the next lot, sits a beautiful, three tiered, copper fountain. Each of the tiers, gaining size as they descend, is full of pigeons bathing their feathers in the cool, flowing water. The base is made up of four statues shaped like children dressed in robes and sitting upon urns which shoot water out into a pool surrounding the entire cascade. From the level of the commons the pool is raised three steps, of which the top one is currently be used as a stage from where a man is brandishing the good book and delivering a sermon (the context sounding dire in importance from the emphasis of his Spanish words) to the unmoved disciples of the square. Across the park, children and their parents have gathered to watch and feed the multitude of pigeons that have swarmed down from the building tops above. Venders sell small packages of corn while other entrepreneurs offer photos to parents of their child covered with the blue and purple bird.

Back at to the Hotel Mango Verde I find Dave with a cup of tea in hand going over notes. We sit and have a chat and decide to catch a cab down to a bar he knows of. The destination is only a few blocks away but the area is a different place when sun goes down and we decide that it is safer to let someone else do the driving. It is a seedy little place – the best kind, and for the first time since I left Seattle I hear a few songs from back home. It is a good place to unwind and talk about the things I had seen in the park and in the market.

Later, we return to our rooms. I lie in bed and think about what the next two months of coastal living will bring. Tomorrow Trevor’s plane will arrive and from there we will be off. I close my and drift deeply in to sleep.